HT Archives: India and Pak seal historic Simla pactin bid to mend ties
Indo-Pakistan summit concludes with a peace agreement signed by PM Indira Gandhi and President Bhutto, aiming for bilateral resolution of issues.
The five- day Indo-Pakistan summit ended in a grand climax with the signing of an agreement by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistan President Z. A. Bhutto here tonight.
The signing ceremony was held at 1240 a.m. at the Durbar Hall of Himachal Bhavan where Mr Bhutto is staying.
The agreement came at the end of hard bargaining by both sides and was held up for lack of agreement on a formulation of the Kashmir question. A compromise eventually emerged after two rounds of talks Mrs Gandhi and Mr Bhutto held today. The final round was at the end of the dinner given by the Pakistan President in honour of the Prime Minister.
The agreement, which sets out guidelines on durable peace and normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan, will be made public simultaneously in Simla and Islamabad tomorrow.
According to the agreement India and Pakistan have agreed to settle all the mutual problems bilaterally and not invoke any third party.
Both countries have also agreed to abjure the use of force in settling the issues between them.
The Pakistan President and his team of 83 aides are expected to leave here for Islamabad tomorrow morning. Mrs Gandhi will stay for another day and reach New Delhi on Tuesday.
This was how the agreement was reached. After dinner the two leaders met for ten minutes separately.
The principal aides of both the sides were then called in.
Thereafter, members of the Political Affairs Committee of the Union Cabinet, Finance Minister Y. B. Chavan. Agriculture Minister Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed. Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram, External Affairs Minister Swaran Singh-who also attended the dinner, were consulted.
Mrs Gandhi then decided to initial the agreement.
According to sources here India has agreed under the documents signed tonight to withdraw troops from occupied territories in the western front except from those in Jammu and Kashmir.
The brief signing ceremony was watched by members of the Political Affairs Committee of the Union Cabinet.
The agreement has to be ratified by both the countries. The Pakistan National Assembly would meet in the middle of August and is expected to ratify it.
A beaming Mr Bhutto acknowledged greetings from the waiting Pressmen. They cheered him for the successful conclusion of the agreement.
Mr Bhutto told them he would not answer any questions today.
Mrs Gandhi and Mr Bhutto said the agreement would mark a “new beginning” in the relations between India and Pakistan.
Mr Bhutto said he was satisfied with the agreement.
Mrs Gandhi also expressed her satisfaction.
The Pakistan President could not say when he and Mrs Gandhi would meet again.
“I hope it will be soon,” he said, immediately after signing the agreement.
Earlier, the talks ran into rough weather with no agreement on the summit document.
India today made an effort to meet the Pakistani demands to “some extent” by revising the draft it presented yesterday for Pakistani consideration. Today’s new Indian draft was approved at a meeting of the Political Affairs Committee of the Union Cabinet and was taken to Mr Bhutto by Mr P. N. Haksar, the Principal Secretary of the Prime Minister, and Foreign Secretary T. N. Kaul personally. It was further considered, but without any agreement, at a meeting of the principal aides of the Prime Minister and the Pakistan President.
At the end of the afternoon round of talks with the Prime Minister, Mr Bhutto addressed a news conference where he seemed to be hopeful that an agreed formulation would emerge from his final meeting with Mrs Gandhi late tonight. He admitted the progress was held up for lack of agreement on the Kashmir question. “We are in a deadlock. but there is hope of limited success,” the Pakistan President said in reply to a question while declining to spell out further details.
Mr Bhutto’s overall impression of the summit, till the time he came to address the news conference, was that “we have not succeeded. we have not failed.” But, he added, meaningfully, “the situation may change after our post dinner talks.”
He maintained that the dialogue itself was a big step towards normalisation of relations with India. There was need to clear the subjective prejudices of the last 25 years before the two countries could deal effectively with objective elements. A beginning had been made and that itself was a gain, he pleaded. Both the countries had suffered, Pakistan particularly, by shutting the door on each other. Pakistan at least was not going to shut the door, he explained. He also noted hopefully that Mrs Gandhi had spoken of “a series of summits” at her meeting with Pakistani newsmen yesterday.
In his replies to questions on specific issues, Mr Bhutto displayed a willingness to rub off the sharp edges of differences between the standpoints of the two countries. On Kashmir, he said, Pakistan stood by the self-determination principle while India had its own stand. He added significantly that the gap between the two viewpoints could be narrowed down by talks. Pakistan was prepared to negotiate, he declared categorically.
The Pakistan President was not clear in his replies to questions regarding renunciation of force in the settlement of Indo-Pakistani disputes or adopting bilateral means as the sole method of dealing with them.
He seemed to give the impression that acceptance of these two principles by Pakistan at this stage would amount to “an imposition”. Even if he accepted “an unequal treaty it will not work, the people won’t accept it,” he said somewhat enigmatically. The effort should be to have “equitable agreements or treaties” which the people on both sides would consider “fair and just.”
India, he said in reply to a question, was “not trying to impose an unequal treaty on Pakistan.”
On settling all Indo-Pakistan issues bilaterally, and without any interference by outside powers or agencies, Mr Bhutto said he fully agreed with the approach in principle. But the world, he said, had become smaller and wondered if it would be possible for India and Pakistan to screen themselves off from the rest of the world entirely.
Mr Bhutto saw no prospect of Pakistan reducing its defence budget at present. “We must take into account the realities,” he said. He countered the question by asking “will India reduce its defence budget?” He indicated the subject had not figured in the summit talks. Issues like this, he explained, could be considered only when the two countries reached broad agreement on basic issues. Broad principles and specific issues intermingle and flow into one another, he said.
The Pakistan prisoner’s issue, he hoped, would not be subjected to bargaining. On the trial of the prisoners for war crimes, he hoped Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would “think more dispassionately.” He reiterated his view that trial of the prisoners in Bangladesh tribunal would have far-reaching repercussions in Pakistan. He was not condoning the crimes committed by individual Pakistanis but they should be tried in Pakistan under its own laws, he said.
